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On 21 July, a seismic shift occurred in American politics when current US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for re-election and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the 47th president of the United States.

Yet, until her CNN interview with Dana Bash on August 29, Harris avoided the press and media appearances, leaving Americans in the dark about her specific policy positions as presidential nominee just months before they go to the polls on November 5.

Time magazine went ahead and ran a cover story on Harris – who graced the cover of the 26 August edition with the accompanying words: “Her Moment” – despite Harris declining to do an interview.

If elected, Harris would mark many firsts in US political history. She would be the first female president, the first Asian-American and black woman president, and her administration with running mate Tim Walz would likely be the most socially “progressive” in matters of abortion rights, gender and family politics and religious liberty.

Abortion Rights

Gender Ideology

Gender ideology would also run even more rampant under a Harris-Walz presidency. Harris has positioned herself as a champion for women, yet she endorsed a new Title IX rule requiring schools that receive federal funding to allow transgender students to enter female spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms.

Title IX was initially established in 1972 to protect females from sex-based discrimination. The new rule redefines “sex” to include “gender identity” – making it more difficult to preserve the safety and sex-based rights of women and girls in their spaces.

In 2023, Walz signed what his supporters labelled as “trans refuge” legislation, which grants legal protection to out-of-state minors and providers who wish to access and deliver gender-affirming care. Walz also signed an executive order in 2021 prohibiting mental-health professionals in Minnesota from offering “conversion therapy”, allowing children to embrace their gender or sexual identity without question. We have similar bans on “conversion therapy” in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and ACT.

Religious Discrimination

Then comes Harris and Walz’s sour record on religious freedom. In 2018, Harris introduced and sponsored the Do No Harm Act, which aimed at amending the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to prevent it from being used as a “licence to discriminate”. The bill failed at the time but is back again in Congress.

A safeguard for Americans of faith, the RFRA granted legal protections in cases where a person’s religious liberty was infringed upon, such as in the case of religious health professionals when faced with abortion mandates.

Walz imposed tougher restrictions on places of worship than on businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic; signed a bill in 2023 that excluded faith-based universities from a significant postsecondary state program; and, again in 2023, signed a bill that added “gender identity” as a protected status to Minnesota’s Human Rights Act but excluded religious exemptions. In all three cases, Walz back-pedalled only after he was met with backlash and lawsuits.

Harris and Walz have made their voices heard loud and clear on these social issues, but hardly so in other policy areas.

In a brazen about-face on Donald Trump’s border wall – which she once referred to as “useless” and “racist” – Harris has announced that she would sign a bipartisan border security bill that would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to continue border wall construction. She has also flip-flopped on Medicare-for-All and a fracking ban.

But, based on the few values and policies that Harris has actually clarified this close to the election, she and Walz would be the most left-wing administration in American history – one that would be harmful to women, to people of faith and especially to the unborn.

To quote Harris’ viral phrase, the policies of the Harris-Walz ticket are truly “unburdened by what has been” – by ‘old-fashioned’ notions of the sanctity of life, biological reality and faith-based rights. If they are elected, their presidency will be a bleak four years in an ever-raging culture war.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons.